Warp wrote:
> myself: Do you have any game gems which you would recommend people to try?

Sure, read ahead...

> - Grim Fandango. Every gaming website always has this game on their top
> list of best games in history, praising it for its ingenuity and writing,
> yet it seems that people still don't know it. It's a very old game, but
> still works well.

One of those Lucasarts point-n-click classics with clever writing and 
the right dose of humor and suspense.  Rightful heirs to Infocom legacy. :)

Sadly, never played it.  Swan Song... but Day of the Tentacle and Sam & 
Max are the other gems and I've had quite some fun.

> - Beyond Good & Evil. A very "consoleish" game (published, not surprisingly,
> for game consoles but also for Windows), which is rather good, but went

Always heard of it, but never really could get around at playing it.

> - The Prince of Persia "sands of time trilogy". You should get the trilogy

Those are very good, indeed.

I still get a kick of the original PC game as well -- specially the 
updated version in the SNES.

> - Final Fantasy I and II. These are basically the original FF1 and FF2

Final Fantasy 6 (SNES), 7 and Tactics (Playstation 1) are the best in 
the franchise, hands down!  5 and 8 were almost there.

Well, here are some of my personal favorite underdogs, in no particular 
order except perhaps being closer to my heart:
- Super Metroid (SNES) (best action/adventure side-scroller ever)
- Kenseiden (Sega Master System) (pure side-scrolling action with 
amazing creepy mood)
- Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64) (you know)
- Ico and Shadow of Colossus (PS2) (gems)
- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Playstation 1) (Metroidvania)

If you ever can get your hands in any of these games, do it.  Yes, I 
know that Zelda was a huge hit, not an underdog, but worth mentioning 
anyway.

In later years I've been digging interactive-fiction games (AKA 
text-adventures) very much.  After the commercial demise in the latter 
80's, a vibrant online community formed around old interpreters and game 
formats, hacked and extended those away and began developing new titles, 
entering competitions and all.  The media became more mature and 
experimental, much unlike the old plain gigantic and sometimes obtuse 
treasure hunting cave crawlers like Zork and Adventure.

The mechanics are still pretty similar:  you role play a personage in a 
fiction setting by having the place, objects and persons in a given 
scene told to you in second-person.  You can then issue commands, like:

 > look
 > take something
 > examine something
 > sit
 > open door
 > put the book on the table
 > go north

and the result of your actions may affect the game outcome or not.  Some 
actions are standard and even have short aliases, like l(ook), 
(e)x(amine) something or cardinal directions like NW to go in that 
direction.

Below are some of my favorites, the product of some of the "best-seller" 
new amateur interactive-fiction authors out there.  They are playable 
online thanks to efforts to bring a z-machine emulator in javascript. :)

Out of them all, I enjoy Shade the best, short but a true masterpiece by 
Andrew Plotkin.

If you never played IF games before, I suggest 9:05, Balances, 
Metamorp(hoses) and Photopia first.  If you are in for some of those 
older huge cave crawlers but with much more literary substance, I 
suggest Curses, Jigsaw, Savoir-Faire and Anchorhead.  I suggest all of 
them, of course. :)

http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/curses.z5.js
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/905.z5.js
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/Balances.z5.js
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/Tangle.z5.js
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/AllRoads.z5.js
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/shade.z5.js
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/photopia.z5.js
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/weather.z5.js
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/FailSafe.z5.js
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/Wallpaper.zblorb.js
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/anchor.z8.js
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/Galatea.zblorb.js
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/I-0.z5.js
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/Jigsaw.z8.js
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/metamorp.z5.js
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/Savoir-Faire.zblorb.js
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/sherbet.z5.js
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/mindelec.z5.js
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/SoFar.z8.js

There's much more to be found in places like:
http://www.wurb.com/
http://www.ifreviews.org/
http://ifcomp.org/
http://mirror.ifarchive.org/

Post a reply to this message